We have somewhere in the region of 900 users, but of these, only 200 or so are important to us. We are thinking of migrating over to Google Apps for business and need to know if we could simply set up (and pay for) 200 accounts, with the other 700 users being taken care of via an email forwarding solution.

4 Answers
4

Yes, you can set up split delivery. That way, all incoming mail goes through Google's servers, but you can specify which emails are delivered to Gmail inboxes, and which are delivered to inboxes on other servers (like your current email system).

If I understand correctly, this situation applies to you:

If some users use Gmail and others use their legacy accounts, you can
have mail delivered to a Gmail account or a legacy mail account
depending on the recipient. This option is called split delivery.

Thank you so much for this, that was the exact answer I was hoping for.
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Rob ForrestOct 16 '12 at 12:32

Ooops, I updated the answer at the exact moment you accepted it. I changed the link to a slightly more relevant support article.
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Vidar S. RamdalOct 16 '12 at 12:32

Just came to think: When you sign up for Google Apps, you get assigned a temporary domain. Thus, you could also do the forwarding the other way around: In your legacy email system, set up your 200 users to forward email to Gmail (user@temporary-google-doman.com). That way, you won't have to change MX records.
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Vidar S. RamdalOct 17 '12 at 10:14